Delay–Rate–Distortion Optimized Rate Control for End-to-End Video Communication Over Wireless Channels

Abstract — In addition to the rate-distortion (R-D) behavior, in a real-time wireless video communication system, the end-to-end delay would also significantly affect the overall video reception quality. To analyze, control, and optimize the R-D behavior under the end-to-end delay constraint, in this paper we extend the traditional R-D optimization (RDO) for the wireless video communication system and formulate a novel delay–RDO-based rate control problem, by investigating the allocation of end-to-end delay to different delay components. It aims at minimizing the average total end-to-end distortion under the transmission rate and end-to-end delay constraints, by a joint selection of both the source coding and the channel coding parameters. The wireless channel is represented by a finite-state Markov channel model characterizing the time-varying process and predicting the future channel condition. As applicable solutions, a practical algorithm based on the Lagrange multiplier approaches, Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions, and sequential quadratic programming methods is developed. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm over the existing schemes. Index Terms — Delay–rate–distortion optimization (dRDO), end-to-end distortion, rate control, wireless video. I